By the end of August, half a dozen Porter County employees from various departments had racked up at least 100 hours of comp time each, according to a report.

One employee in the prosecutor’s office, according to a comp time report prepared by Auditor Vicki Urbanik, had just shy of 514 hours of comp time. An animal shelter employee came in a distant second, with almost 391 hours of comp time, from a few years ago.

The auditor’s office began tracking comp time almost three years years ago, Urbanik said, and started providing the information to the Board of Commissioners regularly in December 2016. New time and attendance software, implemented by the auditor’s office last year, has shed greater light on what county officials are calling a tremendous financial liability that must come to an end.

Employees who leave county jobs are owed any unused comp time at their current rate of pay, Urbanik said, making comp time a financial liability that can put pressure on a department’s budget.

Over the course of the year, the total liability out of the county’s general fund has fluctuated this year, according to the comp time report. Through Aug. 24, the liability to the general fund was $132,629.28. It peaked on Aug. 10 at $135,985.17.

One of the reasons the auditor’s office began tracking comp time, Urbanik said, was to put a dollar value on what the county owed its employees.

“These are unfunded liabilities, is what they are, and as county government, I don’t think we should have as high unfunded liabilities,” Board of Commissioners President Jeff Good, R-Center, said during a recent meeting.

In all, according to the report, the departments with the largest liability in comp time in most cases from 2018 were as follows:

Sheriff’s department: $47,854.78

Jail: $37,686.28

Prosecutor’s office: $16,060.33

Animal shelter: $13,897.36

Parks department: $10,252.61

“Some of these numbers are out of this orbit,” Councilman Dan Whitten, D-At large, said.

With the county’s budget hearings now underway, department heads and elected officials can expect questions from the council about their comp time.

“We are going to want to address comp time and what they’re going to do about it,” Whitten said, adding conversations could focus on staffing levels and the possibility of budget cuts.

Going forward, Good said, department heads will have to physically sign off on comp time so they are actually seeing and acknowledging the request.

“One wonders if that’s actually happening or not,” he said. “We have to get a handle on this.”

Rhonda Young, the county’s human resources director, and Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, said departments are making progress on reducing the comp time load.

Each department’s situation is in some ways unique.

Responding via email to questions about the employee in his office who had hundreds of hours of comp time, which officials said equaled $13,500, Prosecutor Brian Gensel said he is evaluating the position to determine if it can be re-classified as exempt for purposes of comp time.

“We are also evaluating whether in the future we will need to request an additional administrative staff position. Currently we do not have office space for another admin, but after the move next year to the old jail building, we will have space to accommodate an additional position,” he said.

Animal shelter director Toni Bianchi went before commissioners with transfer requests totaling more than $13,000 to pay comp time to two employees.

The comp time accumulated a few years ago under a previous shelter director, officials said.

“We are making sure comp time is not being accumulated like it was before. They have to clear it with me,” she told commissioners.

Sheriff David Reynolds pointed out that he oversees the county’s largest departments with the most employees. The sheriff’s department has 78 civilian and merit employees, he said, and the jail has 79 employees.

Those departments also had the largest decreases in comp time from late July to late August, with the sheriff’s department cutting almost $2,500 and the jail reducing just over $1,600.

“Historically, we do not have a comp time issue,” he said, adding once employees in either department hit more than 40 hours of comp time, they get paid for it.

The nature of the jobs in both departments, such as keeping the jail staffed overnight and having deputies available to go to crime scenes, as well as trying to maintain staffing levels, means keeping hours down will always be a challenge.

Earlier this month, with a split vote and a member absent, the park board was not able to grant a request from Superintendent Walter Lenckos to pay out more than 300 hours of comp time earned by two employees over the summer.

The employees, Lenckos said during a Sept. 6 board meeting, had to put in more time when another employee resigned before summer camp got under way. He had requested a transfer of $8,888 to cover the cost.